So I talked to one of the guys that I ran SSC against last year the other day. From the SSC setup, he added 17x9's, 245 RE71R's, coilovers and plates ( think he said KW's), and swapped to the stock rear bar. Stock power, stock tune.

...and he is decently competitive in his local "pro" class against a lot of national drivers at a site that draws people from across the SE for locals. He won an event this year, too.

So you can go a very long way with coilovers/plates, rear LCA's if you need them to get the alignment right, and a bigger front bar.

From there, you can pick a header/tune, and then do small things as you see fit.

I've chased my tail on alignment, dampers, spring rates, sway bars, tire pressures, ride heights, I've screwed them all up at one time or another on this car and I've always been forced to measure myself against Nationally competitive cars (it's a treat running in this region, almost always an STX, STU, or STR car that has a history of multiple trophies or at least the the talent to get it done).

On the one hand I totally agree, you can get this car really fast without dumping more than a couple thousand bucks into it, coilovers, camber plates, front bar, wheels, tires, header, tune, rlca and you're almost there. I really disagree that you can just slap on any reputable off the shelf coilover kit and do well. Most of them are not designed with STX levels of grip and autocross transitions in mind and will need work to dial in for what we want them to do. There are a lot of pitfalls when building a car for the first time, I fell into a lot of them (hell last event I went too far on a rake adjustment, lost a lot of cornering grip on that one) and mashing together random pieces of advice will take far longer for a newbie to arrive at a conclusion, if they even can with what they bought.

Humans take for granted what we learn doing something for a long time, obvious things to pros like disconnecting sway bars or making sure tire pressure is right when corner balancing is news to rookies. I bet your buddy didn't just slap on a set of KW's: spring changes, ride height, damper changes, alignment didn't magically spring forth from a hunch when he bolted the parts together, there's experience or guidance happening there.

Glad to see more blood joining the class, I've shied away from National events but I'm hoping to make a run at them next year unless life gets in the way.

Coilovers are currently a bit out of my price range. Would it be beneficial to get camber plates for use with the stock suspension to get my desired camber?

Or how much can I expect to get with just camber bolts? Are whiteline or SPC better for this application?

That was my first or second mod to the car, I loved the car with camber, hated it without, was autocrossing but not considering an SCCA build at the time. You'll be sinking more money into the car in the long run vs buying a camber plate that matches the coilovers, I had Racesengs so I could buy/machine the parts I needed when converting from stock to aftermarket but it's not the cheapest option.

Should be able to get a bit more than -2 on stock struts with 14mm cam bolt in the bottom and the small oe bolt in the top hole. SPC are usually cheaper than Whiteline, same part, you'll probably want them for the coilovers too so it's not wasted money to buy them sooner rather than later.http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103609

I'm getting a little frustrated with my setup development so maybe the community here has some helpful advice. Throughout the last two years of running a twin in STX I have tried a variety of setups in terms of spring rates and sway bars and I have consistently had issues with mid-turn push. The current setup is 350F/400R, stock rear bar, Karcepts front bar. Caster is 7*, 4.1* camber in the front and 2.5* in the rear. I have about 3mm of positive rake. I currently run rivals and I run the fronts at 27 PSI and I get just a little roll over on the edge but not a lot. I've tried down to 26 PSI and that was definitely not an improvement. I've checked tire temperatures and I find about 15* warmer on the inside edge with the middle measuring closer to the outside edge than the inside which has led me to experiment again with higher front pressures which has yielded mixed results. I like the turn in but it doesn't help my mid turn grip problem. Turn in feels very good as is and the car transitions pretty well. Once I shed enough speed to get the front end planted the car exits very well with good balance on throttle. Generally adding throttle to rotate out of the push will just cause more push unless the speed is just right to have the power to really break the rears loose. The car also will not trail brake at all. Holding a little brake in to a turn just causes the car to push on entry rather than turn in nicely before pushing. Almost every single sweeper or 90* at nats was a nightmare. I was slowing more than I wanted to before turn in, getting a decent entry and then once the car was set the front end just pushed until I shed enough speed to be able to get on the gas so I was always on the gas late.

I've ended up adjusting the front bar down to the third softest setting of 7 which is still rather stiff at 346 lbs. In order to keep turn in crisp when changing to softer sway bar settings I have bumped front compression damping up to about 7 clicks on MCS.

The obvious course of action I think would be to continue softening the front or to stiffen the rear but the problem I am running in to is that the front is already getting to the point where it's soft enough to be close to running out of travel. I made sure that I'm maximizing travel in the front when installing this suspension system. I use a bump stop that contacts the damper body within a few mm of when the tire contacts the fender liner. I am not currently running out of front travel but pictures of the car on course show that it's not too far from doing so. I've tried the front bar all the way up to almost full stiff and that really made the problem worse. I've tried a stiffer rear bar but that made the rear end really snappy under throttle and I had trouble putting power down. I believe the next thing I am going to try is stiffer rear springs (450 lbs as I can't find any 425s in the right length) and if the car gets too loose I can balance that out with more front sway. I'm not really a fan of this solution though because I already am not using all of my rear travel. I took a video of the rear suspension motion at the damper on a rough road through some hard turns and found that the suspension is really only traveling through 60% of the available range and as such stiffer springs will really only act to sacrifice rear grip rather than to improve front grip.

Another solution I have considered is to use some rear toe out. I have usually kept rear toe at 0 but currently I have just a hair of rear toe in, about 2mm total.

Understandably, many will say that this problem is more a result of driving style than of setup. I have been trying to drive around this by reducing entry speeds and keeping steering inputs smooth but in order to avoid this mid-turn push I end up sacrificing entry speed so much that I'm just slow. Not to mention, using some rear compression damping has the car so balanced on initial turn in that it's even harder to give up that entry speed.

I would appreciate any constructive input on this. I'm just stumped as to whether the front end is pushing because it's too stiff, is it a matter of tire pressure and/or camber, is it that there is not enough front roll stiffness and the body is rolling too much, or are the weight distribution and other inherent characteristics of this car just such that I need to accept limiting rear travel and grip by going too stiff on the rear springs in order to get the car balanced out mid turn so I can get on the throttle earlier.

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@CoolHandMoss
I'm in a very similar place with my setup (spring rates, camber, rake etc. close but not quite the same, different front bar though), and I agree, the car feels mid-corner front grip limited (based on feeling during runs and some skidpad testing earlier this year, right when the car takes a set the front hits it's grip limit). I threw a ton of rake at it a few weeks ago by raising the rear, definitely wasn't complaining about mid-corner push and only lost the front end overdriving corner entry, but was not able to get nearly as much lateral G out of the car as before, definitely made it slower by removing a bunch of rear grip, most of the rake is coming out for the next event and I'll be stiffening the front bar I've got and I'm thinking about lowering the front after trying that. I could probably balance the car just by changing the rake but like you I feel like I'm missing something with the front end still and it'd be frustrating to know that I can find more rear grip with a simple adjustment and I'm just leaving it on the table because I'm also stumped with the front.

949 is targeting 5-10mm of rake based on their track setup, modest ride heights, reading back on Lugod's posts here he ran a stiff front bar with a soft front spring to improve transition speed (5k/280#, 22mm Perrin, 9k/500# rear spring for reference), not saying it's the definite thing to copy but as a reference point. I've seen a few people come and go with the car and I'm wondering if this is because compromising the sweepers with a bit of push to improve transition gets frustrating for some people, that there's only so much grip the front end can produce in ST trim. Aside from the obvious power/cheapo interior/strut tire wear/long term reliability questionable stuff.

The big thing that stands out in your post is the trail braking comment, haven't heard too many negatives on that front, do you have staggered pads and are you using pedal dance? I've tried pedal dance for a bit, more disadvantages than advantages for autox imho, but it certainly helps the car rotate like a top on the brakes. It helped me learn to be gentler on the brakes to not hit ice mode and feel what the car is willing and unwilling to do. If the car isn't acting right on the brakes I blame myself and I'm usually right about being wrong. I also started learning that 'less is more' on turn in and I definitely have an overdriving corner entry problem that I'm fighting bit by bit.

I am sure that better front grip is possible. Plenty of people carry way higher entry speeds than I can with this car without their setups even being all that much different it seems!

No I don't use the pedal dance. HP+ pads all around. So, with that in mind, not the best conditions for good trail braking.

I keep circling back to the same three theories and I am going to need some testing to figure out if one might pay off. Theory one is that my contact patch is bad and I need to adjust front camber and tire pressure to fix that. Theory two is that the front is too stiff and softening it will help grip and theory three is that the front is already too soft and the body is rolling too much and that stiffening the front to the common 400 squared spring set up will help. Though I've run 400 squared before and it was definitely pushy. Of course, there is a lot else that is different now so it might be worth a try.

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